Since ancient times, people have been eating for the sky, and the king's law is no exception. There are exquisite and varied foods in the court. Needless to say, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty was well dressed, so what did he eat?
1. What does the emperor usually eat?
According to the chronicle of Nanjing Guanglu Temple, Zhu Yuanzhang's diet on a certain day in June 17: breakfast: fried mutton, shredded goose, shredded cabbage, boiled pig's trotters, fried fresh fish, cooked meat in the furnace, cooked rice noodles and cooked chicken. There are 12 channels in total.
Lunch: Shrimp with Pepper and Vinegar, Roasted Goose, Roasted Sheep Head and Foot, Red Roasted Goose, Salted Mustard Belly Plate, Garlic and Vinegar White Blood Soup, Five-flavor Steamed Chicken, Sweet and Vinegar Steamed Kidney Flower, Steamed Fresh Fish, Five-flavor Steamed Gluten, Lamb Crystal Corner, Goose Sliced Noodle Soup, Sanxian Soup, Daoxiao Noodles, Chopped Lamb, Fragrant Rice, etc. There are 24 channels in all.
As for the content of the dinner, there is no record in the history books.
With so many dishes, the emperor is too extravagant. Can you finish them? The fact is that in the early Ming Dynasty, everything was in ruins. From the emperor to the people, frugality and simplicity dominated, which was nothing compared with the grain in the late Ming Dynasty. However, since it was eaten by the emperor, the food and beverage director certainly made a few more moves, and one more dish gave him another choice. For example, Emperor Chongzhen's diet is too rich, but he only has porridge: steamed fragrant rice, steamed glutinous rice, steamed millet, rice porridge, coix seed porridge, western cool rice porridge, Gu Liang rice porridge, millet bean porridge, pine nut chestnut jujube porridge and so on. There are other noodles, meat, vegetables and seafood on the table. Take whatever you like. Court food is so rich, is there anything else? Of course. Let's start with staple food, dishes, seafood, soup and drinks.
rice noodles
During the Wanli period, Huang Yi recorded in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty that there were many kinds of court pasta, such as steamed bread, flower rolls, cakes, flower cakes and noodles. Just like the pastry market. There are exquisite shapes, such as flower rolls with steamed rolls, Christina rolls and butterfly rolls, and there are many kinds of cakes, steamed cakes, bean cakes, sand cakes, sugar cakes, sesame cakes and pretzels. Flowers can be used as snacks and desserts, such as chrysanthemum cake, sunflower cake, hibiscus cake, pomegranate cake, lotus seed cake, etc., and can be pounded into stuffing to make cakes. Noodles include noodles, egg noodles, white noodles and so on. In short, spaghetti is rich enough.
Did the emperors of the Ming Dynasty also like to eat patterned rice? There are not many records in history books, but a cool breeze rice is put forward separately. Just listening to the name makes you feel very artistic, right? This is a kind of rice that can cool off the summer heat in the scorching sun: crystal rice, longan powder, borneol powder, beef and milk are mixed, put into a golden basin, then put into an ice pool for thorough cooling, and then made into cold rice by conduction. We all know that pasta is the main food in the north and rice is the main food in the south. The Ming emperor Judy began to live in Beijing, and his staple food gradually tended to be pasta.
vegetables
There are many kinds of meat for dinner, common poultry and exotic animals. Goose, for example, was very precious and delicious in the Ming Dynasty, but it was generally not very delicious. According to the national records of royal meat, there are many ways to eat it, such as burning, steaming and salt, and there are nearly ten ways to eat it. There is also a dish called Kung Pao Chang Boiled Chicken, which is actually made of horse meat and chicken. Horse meat represents dragons and chicken represents chickens. According to the records of Emperor Liu Ruoyu, the eunuch in the palace, the dishes in the first month are: spicy live rabbit, yellow squirrel beyond the Great Wall, live shrimp under the ice, cold-cut sheep tail, fried sheep belly, pig enema, sausage, oil kidney and so on. Emperor Chongzhen also had the habit of eating donkey meat.
Strange, why not mention beef? Cattle had a high status in ancient China, and the ceremony of offering sacrifices to Thai prisons was to use cattle, pigs and sheep as juvenile prisons, which was lower than cattle. Cattle, as the most important farming tool, can't be slaughtered casually, otherwise it is viola.
As for vegetables, Song Qifeng recorded that when Emperor Chongzhen had a meal, some coarse-grained vegetables, such as bitter vegetable roots, bitter vegetable leaves, dandelion, reed roots, asparagus, garlic moss and so on. According to the usual arrangement in the restaurant. So folk seasonal dishes and snacks have also been collected. But how to eat it is not clear. Is it steamed with dipping sauce or fried? There are not many historical records. However, just like now, the emperor's royal diet also chooses some seasonal vegetables according to the season, and there are fresh foods every month and changes every day. Rich in materials and diverse in patterns.
Seafood aquatic products
Most of the food in the palace is paid from other places, which creates a problem. According to the traffic conditions at that time, the seafood and aquatic products shipped from the south were not fresh. For example, Wanli Wild records that the shad from the south of the Yangtze River are transported to Beijing for cooking. The eunuch covered it with other smells, and the emperor gave it to cabinet ministers, who often ate it. It's delicious, but you can't eat it. Once again, the eunuch in the palace went to Nanjing to do business and angrily asked the chef why he didn't serve fresh shad. The chef said there was one for every meal, which means you didn't see it? As a result, the eunuch stared at the shad and observed it carefully. It was very similar in shape, but why didn't it stink without it? July is a good season to eat shad, which is produced in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It is definitely no problem to eat in Nanjing. But Beijing is so far away, the heat is unbearable, and the seafood in the south has long been stinky. It shows that the eunuchs in the palace are normal on weekdays, but I don't know about fresh shad and Tang.
Assorted fruit cup
According to the season, you can pay tribute to the palace and eat oranges, Zhangzhou oranges, kumquat, Xishan apples, pomegranate and so on. There are many snacks, such as flower pies, candy, sugar cakes, tea with sugar, and some snacks with honey. Yuanxiao, eaten on the fifteenth day of the first month, is filled with glutinous rice flour, walnuts, sugar and roses and cooked with wine, which is more exquisite than now.
Tang Pin cold drink
There are many soups when serving, such as Peony Head Soup, Chicken Oil Cake Soup, Mushroom Lantern Soup and Pork Longsong Soup. Some are cold drinks in summer, such as sour plum soup, grape soup, milk and so on. There is a special Luling drink, glutinous rice, old rice and millet, which is boiled in a pot and condensed into mist.
2. Did the Ming emperors have a healthy diet?
Medicinal diet was not new in Ming dynasty. The Drinking Recipe written by Hu Sihui, a doctor in Yuan Dynasty, is an advanced health-preserving recipe. Health preservation is also very popular in the circle of scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and there will be some fresh information to share from time to time. For example, Gao Lian became a female agent and a big cow in the health care circle by virtue of respecting the holy eight tones. After talking so much delicious food, did the emperor eat healthily?
Modern nutrition experts believe that red meat such as beef and pork can supplement protein, but it should not be eaten in excess. The increase of fat can easily lead to fatty liver, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and so on. Usually cooking with less oil, salt and sugar is better. Generally speaking, steamed vegetables and boiled vegetables are healthy, and fried vegetables with less oil are acceptable. The most unhealthy thing is smoking, roasting and frying. This vegetable is easy to produce carcinogens when cooked at high temperature.
Every dish of the Ming emperor was meaty and few dishes, and the cooking style was just like that of Song Qifeng in Sakamoto Chronicle.
Smoking, roasting, boiling, burning, boiling and frying are fast and too thick.
Steamed vegetables and boiled vegetables are not the mainstream of Ming Taizu's diet, and foods baked at high temperature are especially unhealthy. In addition, the emperors of the Ming dynasty ate heavy food, which was tasteless and enjoyable. They have to have more spices, such as sesame oil, soy sauce and sweet noodle sauce, which are bought at high prices outside the palace. According to the records of Zhu years, Ming Xizong's favorite foods are grilled clams, fried fresh shrimps, frog legs, dried bamboo shoots and a dish he likes very much. He stewed sea cucumber, fish, shark tendon, fat chicken and pig's trotters, which was as greasy as you can imagine. Eat watermelon in summer and put some salt! This kind of food is unique, sweet and salty.
Then the question is, is everyone envious of such an advanced royal meal? For example, the Jiangnan literati living in-are exquisite and elegant. Not only did they have no teacher's envy, but they also sneered at the emperor's food.
Lv Shusheng comments on Beijing cuisine in Chongzhen Palace;
The material is roasted with fire, which has a pungent smell and has lost its original taste.
Do you mean what it smells like? It's all spices. Xie once said that the delicacies eaten by the emperor and Beijing officials were greasy and rough. What on earth are they so dazzling? Daniel Gao Lian and Zhang Dai have similar views. These Jiangnan literati advocate a light diet. Although it is a foodie, it is exquisite and healthy, and it is a family of its own. The other school is northern food, which is heavy in taste and bold in style. This implies the improvement of life interest of the scholar-bureaucrat class and the difference of food customs between the north and the south.
Therefore, generally speaking, the diet of Ming emperors was mainly pasta, with greasy eating habits and heavy taste, which was not a healthy way of eating. Do you envy the emperor's royal meal?